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Tuesday, 30 December 2014

Afghanistan has been
subjected to Western military intervention several times in its history,
starting with the first Anglo-Afghan war, 1839-1842. This war coincided with the
First Opium war that England declared against China, demanding that China permit
the East India Company sell Opium inside China, opium that came from India but
would eventually come from Afghanistan as well. England fought two more wars against
Afghanistan – 1878-1880 and in 1919. However, it always had great difficulty
imposing institutional control at any level owing largely to the rebellious
tribes.

While officially gaining
its independence after the third war that the British imposed on the people of
Afghanistan in 1919, the country remained under the British imperialist sphere
of influence, prompting a tribal uprising in 1929. Typical of the manner that
the British operated throughout their empire when a country tried to gain independence,
in 1933 London imposed a puppet ruler King Zahir Shah who remained in power
just six years fewer than the Shah of Iran. The coincidence of the Iranian
revolution in 1979 and rise of a secular pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan came
as a shock to the US that was the world’s self-appointed “policeman’ during the
Cold War.

The contemporary history of
US-Afghan relations is characterized by attempts on the part of Washington to
reduce the Muslim nation into a strategic satellite and use it to counterpoise
the USSR in the 1980s and Iran after 2001. Backing the disparate jihadists
groups, including Osama bin-Laden’s, the US did its best to bring the secular
regime down only to have it replaced by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan
(Taliban) thanks to the support from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, behind which
was the US. When the US toppled the Taliban in 2001, civil war and chaos ensued
because the country lapsed into war-lord rule.

The US would simply inherit
the legacy of British imperialism at gunpoint. US military and financial intervention
in Afghanistan during the 1980s against the Soviet-backed regime resulted in a
strong Mujahedin resistance, along with a strong al-Qaeda that the US had also
helped so they could bring down the Moscow-backed regime. All of this backfired
because what replaced the secular leftist government was a much more militantly
anti-Western regime that repressed human rights and declared America and the
West its enemies.

Under President George Bush, the stated US goal in invading Afghanistan and
coercing Pakistan to accept US military intervention on its soil from which to
launch operation against the Afghan regime, Taliban and al-Qaeda was to capture
and/or kill Osama bin-Laden thus eliminating the terrorism threat to the US.

The stated goal had some merit, although al-Qaeda operated throughout many
countries in the world and it was simply impossible to launch military
invasions against friendly ones like Saudi Arabia. The unspoken US goal was to
establish a foothold next to Iran, given that the US would also invade and occupy
Iraq where regime change took place as it did in Afghanistan. In short, the
real goal of the US was to determine the balance of power so that Iran does not
enjoy that role or at least its power is considerably diminished. NATO
sent troops and money to back the US war effort.

In 2008, amid a very deep recession looming in the horizon, Obama
campaigned on the “bad war in Iraq” vs. the “good war” in Afghanistan, a
campaign that afforded him political “legitimacy” with right wingers and with
domestic and foreign lobbies that profit economically and/or politically from
perpetual conflict in the Middle East. Before the 2008 election, I wrote a
piece about the futility of US persistence in keeping Afghanistan as a
satellite, raising questions about US goals relevant to this day:

* If the goal is to maintain a Karzai-type
regime that controls only a part of the country while peasants grow heroin
whose production has skyrocketed since the US invasion, then that goal has been
achieved but at a very high cost to the US and especially to the people of
Afghanistan and Pakistan alike. Afghanistan remains a very unstable country,
torn by perpetual civil war conflict and it is now the largest poppy producer
in the world because its legitimate economy is in shambles and lkely to remain
so.
* If the goal is to allay the fears of the American people that the US “will
continue to take the war to Al-Qaeda,” the question is whether this has yielded
results other than psychological owing to the assassination of Osama bin-Laden.
Is Homeland Security taking care of this problem at an immense cost to
taxpayers, either that is at $1.6 trillion, as one estimate has it, or $6
trillion when everything is thrown into the mix, from the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq to funds spent at home?
* If the goal is to appease the substantially vociferous right-wing elements
entrenched throughout American society from media and business to politics,
intelligence services to military, as well as Israel and Saudi Arabia that link
their security to a weak Iran, then the money and cost in every other respect
is well worth it as far as the US policymakers are concerned

*If the goal is to maintain the
military-industrial complex healthy and to use the culture of fear as a
mechanism ofconformity against the
background of down socioeconomic mobilization at home, then the Afghanistan
war, along with other US overt and covert militaristic adventures has
succeeded. However, the cost is that the majority of the American people do not
support US sending or maintaining troops in Afghanistan or anywhere in the
Middle East, which is the key to Obama relying heavily on contractor and drone
warfare.

1) Did the United States win
the war in Afghanistan?

The US had lost the war in
Afghanistan as soon as it invaded, despite individual battles won against
Afghan rebels allied to various warlords and groups as we will see. Ideologues
blinded by rationalizations intended to justify the military solution-oriented
US policy, certain corporate interests profiting from war (charging $10 per bottle
of water for the troops), the Israeli lobby, and the US media along with an
assortment of right-wing think tanks refused to see it ten years ago as they do
today. Perhaps it was the idea that the US had just “won the Cold War”, so why
could it not win against Muslim rebels in the mountains of Afghanistan?

Despite the futility of this war that carried a very heavy price for the
people of the invaded land, the US continued presumably to save face and to
show that indeed a real effort had been made before withdrawal that left behind
a land more divided than ever. Remnants of die-hard Cold War mindset, rightwing
ideology, and the symbolism of another American loss transcend pragmatism among
US policymakers – Republicans and Democrats alike. Even if Obama had ordered an
additional 100,000 troops to Afghanistan in 2010 to the existing 50,000 troops
on the ground, the US could have never kept Afghanistan in its sphere of
influence once the troops withdrew. Besides, did the US have the luxury of
massive defense spending without any tangible results to show for it?

That the US has recently signed a bilateral agreement with Kabul, parallel
to the one Kabul signed with NATO, is an indication of its failure to find a
political solution and that it sees no alternative to military occupation, at
least in the next few years. Meanwhile,
the rebel activity has not and will not stop.Just as the US could not
win the war in Vietnam against the Communist North, similarly, it could and
cannot possibly rely on a military solution to Afghanistan, an Islamic country
with deep suspicion if not tremendous hatred for the secular imperialist West
that has invaded the country since the First Opium War and tried to deprive it
of its national sovereignty in every domain from political to economic.

2) What is the view worldwide
of the US intervention in Afghanistan after a decade of war, positive or
negative?

Without any doubt, Muslims throughout the world opposed US military
intervention as they continue to do, considering there is no substantive change
in US foreign policy. In the non-Muslim world, there was never much support for
US militarism as the election of 2008 proved when Obama candidly admitted that
the US had become very unpopular throughout the world, but he would change all
of that by changing US foreign policy. The unpopularity of the US persists
because human rights organizations have charged US-NATO forces have used white
phosphorus, a napalm-like chemical to combat the rebels of Afghanistan, and
drones kill mostly civilians. These constitute war crimes for which the US and
its NATO partners will never answer at the International Court of Justice.

In the June 1984 issue of the State
Department Bulletin, the US raised the issue of chemical weapons use in
Afghanistan during the Russian invasion. The US argued that chemical weapons
use constitutes “a violation of the
Geneva Protocol of 1925, related rules of customary international law, and the
1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.” Moreover, the US took its
case before the UN General Assembly at a time that Reagan’s defense secretary
was talking about ‘limited nuclear war’ as ‘acceptable’ as long as it does not
take place in the US. That was then when the Soviets had troops in Afghanistan.
In the 1980s, the CIA encouraged Afghan warlords to have peasants grow heroin
along with hashish that was sold to Soviet troops. Under US military presence
in Afghanistan, warlords have used the exact same strategy on NATO troops that
they used on Soviets. This was one problem facing NATO that knows better than
anyone the war in Afghanistan is a lost cause.

Another problem is that in June 2009, the US media reported that Afghan
rebels were allegedly using white phosphorus. But who exactly produces white
phosphorus? We know that Israel has used it against Palestinians. The chemical
decomposes the human flesh like a strong acid poured. If Afghan rebels acquired
white phosphorus, then who provided it for them? China and Russia may be
candidates, but not the only ones, if they have any role at all.

The Obama election in 2008 did in fact bring about a change in US
perception because the rest of the world believed the new president would in
fact change the course of foreign policy from militarism and unilateralism to multilateralism
and diplomatic solutions to crises. The world believed that the American
culture of covert and overt interventionism would come to an end and a new era
had dawned in Washington when Obama took office.

The only change from Bush to Obama was reduced reliance on “boots on the
ground” and shift to greater reliance on technology, including drones, and
contractors working for DoD. Given that there was no policy change and the US
continues on the path of neo-imperialism in Afghanistan as in the greater
Middle East area, world public opinion toward the US is right back where Bush
left it in 2008. While people in public opinion polls like many aspects of
American society, they deplore its foreign policy. Anti-Americanism as a
political and cultural phenomenon remains very strong in most of the world.
This is not just among the media and governments, but among the people as well.

3) Did you ever support the
intervention in Afghanistan?

I never supported the war in Afghanistan because a military solution to a
political problem results in mass destruction where the victims are mostly
innocent civilians. Not just on moral grounds, but practical ones, including
nebulous publicly stated goals about US delivering “freedom and democracy”,
always at gunpoint. The idea that the US could “win the war on terror” by
invading Afghanistan was as absurd in the planning stages, as irrational in its
motivations and execution as the current plans to maintain a regime of military
occupation on a more limited basis for the next three years.

When Bush announced the invasion I believed and I still maintain today that
war would accomplish absolutely nothing, including the publicly-stated goals of
the Bush administration and the rationalizations Obama provided for continuing
the war. Other than an immense cost to the US budget and civilian economy from
which resources were diverted, and other than the absurd “war on terror” regime
that replaced the Cold War, the national interest measured in terms of what is
best for the totality of the American people has been damaged very seriously
under Bush and Obama. It is beyond doubt that besides a handful of US
corporations, the beneficiaries of the US invasion in Afghanistan were Iran and
China. As the US was spending enormous amounts of money on a futile war, China
was focused on building its civilian economy which is now the world’s number
one.

Taking advantage of its geographic proximity to Afghanistan and given its
interest in raw materials, China was striking deals with Kabul that it may not
have the opportunity to secure if it were not for the pro-US regime. In return
for some Chinese aid for infrastructural development similar to what China does
in Africa, Afghanistan has signed deal for mining operations, mostly copper
that China needs. In due course, Afghanistan will become an economic satellite
of China, but closely linked politically to Pakistan and with ties to Iran as
well.

While the US invaded with the goal of limiting Iran’s role in the regional
balance of power, the exact opposite took place, as the government in Tehran
strengthened its position with weakened neighbors. There are over one million
Afghan refugees in Iran that the government has used as a bargaining chip with
Kabul. Moreover, Iran had backed insurgent groups. The US realization that it
needs Iran to stabilize Afghanistan, along with Syria and Iraq, of course, is
an admission of its shortsighted militarist-oriented foreign policy that
precludes political solutions as a priority because it deems destabilization
would work to its benefit.

4) With fewer US troops on the ground, will
Al-Qaeda, Lashkar-E-Taiba and the Taliban in Pakistan openly to reinforce the
Taliban in Afghanistan, will it become even worse?

The US-Afghanistan Bilateral
Security Agreement was signed on 30 September 2014, the same day that the NATO
Status of Forces Agreement was signed. This is in essence a continuation of the
status quo, with Afghanistan remaining a strategic satellite of the US-NATO. The
alternative would be to leave completely and permit Iran to enjoy some
influence with Pakistan possibly reducing the country into its satellite after
reaching an agreement with the Taliban. While US-NATO troops would not formally
be engaged in combat operations on the ground, they would have “training and
advisory roles” largely to combat “terrorism” which may require US Special Ops
forces engagement.

Drone missions that many governments and human
rights organizations have castigated as war crimes will continue not only in
Afghanistan but Pakistan well. Only at the end of 2017 would the US “consider”
reducing its military role into what it calls “normal” but without specifying
it. This is a prescription for continued bloodshed in Afghanistan to the
detriment of the people as well as neighboring Pakistan. The Taliban and
warlords are not losing their strength, but gaining as the military occupation
persists.

While the symbolism of Osama Bin
Laden's death may have been significant for the US, the level of Islamic
unconventional warfare (terrorism) has actually increased since the US declared
“war on terror”, reminiscent of the “war on drugs”, the other US success story
on the domestic front! Why would al-Qaeda give up its operations in Afghanistan
until there is removal of foreign forces and a political solution coming from
inside the country with regional powers as supporting players?

As far as the Pakistani-based
Lashkar-E-Taiba, it is highly unlikely that the government in Pakistan can do
very much about it, given that the government has a history of creating and
cooperating with insurgent groups to achieve its foreign policy aims. Why would
Pakistan give up another foreign policy leverage it has in its arsenal?
How likely is Pakistan intelligence, ISI, to give up its valuable links to
Lashkar-E-Taiba just because the US and NATO are opposed to this
"terrorist organization"? When militant Islamic groups look at the
success of ISIS why would they not be encouraged?

5) What will happen to
Afghanistan’s future?

The future
of Afghanistan in the next three to five years looks very much like the past,
namely, unstable unless there is a regime able to forge some kind of consensus
among the disparate tribes and coopting the warlords into the political process.
An estimated 200 warlords in charge of militias call themselves freedom
fighters just as they did when the US supported them against the Soviet-backed
secular regime in the 1980s. These warlords are in many respects the local
power that is much more powerful than the Taliban and al-Qaeda combined,
largely because they are grassroots with local support and sources rooted in
the heroin economy.

What kind of regime can forge
a functional consensus in Afghanistan so that the country’s rebuilding could
start and the people enjoy relative peace and reconstruction of their country
and their lives? First, any strictly secular regime would fail, so it would
have to one that takes the religious and tribal traditions into account of the
disparate groups. Second, massive aid of such an inclusive regime from
different sources, including China, Pakistan, India, Iran, as well as the EU,
US, and oil-rich Arab countries would have to flow into the country to rebuild
it and secure a sustainable legitimate economy instead of the illegal one
rooted in corruption.

Without the strategic
cooperation of Pakistan and Iran, and without the tolerance of its close
neighbors, including India, China, and Russia, there cannot be a stable regime
in Kabul. How likely that we would see stability in Afghanistan? I suspect that
when the economy begins to improve at a rapid pace and peoples’ lives improve,
stability is inevitable. However, this will not come any time soon, because it
is highly unlikely for the warlords and Taliban to be appeased unless they
continue to have a political and economic stake in the new regime.

Externally-imposed solutions such as the US interventionist model will end
in unmitigated failure. Only domestic players, with the assistance of
regional powers can make Afghanistan stable, not permanent military occupation.
This does not mean that the world ought to turn a blind eye if a tyrannical
regime emerges. However, there is a huge difference between genuine international
cooperation intended to help bring about the best form of government in Kabul, and
US military intervention. While the permanent US military occupation, with NATO
backing leaves no room for optimism, the US-Iran rapprochement is a good
beginning for international cooperation at the same time that China’s economic
presence is also a source of relative stability and promise for Afghanistan’s future.

Friday, 26 December 2014

What are
the most significant events of 2014 that are likely to remain dominant in the
next few years or have a lasting impact for the next few decades? According to
the mass media in most Western countries, the personal lives of the rich and
famous, the newest millionaires and billionaires, and the “shocking-value”
headlines from natural disasters to crime are the focus of the significant
stories of 2014. However, those are intended for emotional mass consumption and
manipulation with the intent of distracting people from issues that matter in
their lives.

The most
significant developments of 2014 revolve around the theme of humanity’s
edification and/or detriment. Needless to say, technological and scientific
innovations, especially in the field of medicine and medical technology, rank
among the most significant because of the direct impact on human health and wellness.

Stem cell
research, especially as it pertains to lung and brain, rank among the very top.
Continued improvements on smart devices
and cloud technology will revolutionize everything from the way business is
conducted to how people communicate in the future. These are indeed very
important developments but in the last analysis they simply add to the existing
technological and scientific realm, with a special focus on their profitability
potential rather than benefits to humanity.

Endless
showbiz/celebrity stories that make the cover of magazines with the sole
purpose of dummying down the mass reader even more are hardly worthy of
mention, even if they involve the personal lives of very influential wealthy
individuals or politicians. Then there are the equally endless stories about
millionaires and billionaires becoming even richer because they are simply
“smarter” and “better” investors than the average middle class person working a
9 to 5 shift in the office.

In fact,
there are TV shows, wed sites, newspapers, magazines, and books devoted solely
to the “successful business person” as the modern day hero of our times. No
longer is the scientist, the poet, the artist, the schoolteacher, or the
short-order cook society’s hero unless there is a corporate label behind them.
The mass media and the entire institutional structure celebrate the Wall Street
broker and the billionaire with offshore accounts.

Indeed,
this eulogy of the hero-billionaire ought to make a top ten news story every
year but only if placed in the balanced perspective. Wealth concentration undermines the social fabric, the political system of a pluralistic society
and the capitalist economy that cannot possibly rest on strong
foundations unless there is a broad middle class and well-paid working class to
support the superstructure.Finally, in
this brief essay, the focus will not be on inane trends of 2014, such as the
“ice bucket self-dumping” by the rich and famous to show that they too have a
human aspect just like the ordinary person. The focus here is on developments
that actually have an impact on the lives on billions of people around the
world in the next few years and in some cases for the next few decades, if not for the rest of the century.

China: the world’s
number one economic power.

On a
broader scope, China officially replacing the US as the world’s number one
economy is one of the developments that will change the world.Many analysts, politicians, governments, and
international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had
been predicting that at some point China would become the world’s number one
economy. The estimates of when it would place varied, but no one seriously
believed that the US would fall into second place behind China in 2014. That
the US and China traded place much earlier than many had been predicting is not
significantin terms of world trade and
international trade and investment relationships. Symbolically, however, this
is significant because it confirms without any doubt the continued erosion of
US economic power and with it the psychological impact politically.

China has continued
strengthening its economic power with the goal of even greater global economic
presence, using its influence to stabilize the world arena so it can integrate
as much of it under its aegis as possible. At the same time, the US continued
the policy of heavy reliance on military solutions and covert intervention with
the goal of destabilizing various parts of the world from the Middle East and
Ukraine to Latin America. Ameliorating with Cuba was the significant exception,
although that too was a calculated move intended to deprive Russia of a
standing ally in the Western Hemisphere.

China is
not benefiting from the persistent EU recession, despite efforts to strengthen
trade with the Europeans. Just as the EU economy was about to bounce back after
four years of formal austerity imposed in a number of countries (Portugal,
Ireland, Greece and Cyprus) and informal for the rest of EU, the US comes along
with sanctions on the Russian economy that hurt as much the EU as they do
Russia. At this point, China cannot permit Russia to fall victim to Western
sanctions. While the US demands that EU “make the sacrifice” for the long term
benefits of securing greater market share in former Soviet republics, China
fills the gap that sanctions create. Ultimately, China is the beneficiary of
the conflict between Russia and the West, because China risks nothing and
incurs no military expenses while continuing to expand market share in both
East and West.

ISIS rattled NATO and its regional Middle East
allies.

There were
many significant developments in the Middle East in 2014, including Israel’s
war crimes in the Gaza strip where hundreds of women and children became
victims to Israeli firepower. Besides the ephemeral Israeli aggression on the
Palestinians, the biggest story to come out of the Middle East in 2014 was the
rapid pace with which the jihadist Islamic State (ISIL) established a strong
foothold in Syria and Iraq and threatened the Kurdish minority population in
the process. One would think that the US
learned its lesson from the experience of the 1980s when it was assisting Osama
Bin Laden’s jihadists in Afghanistan against the Soviets helping the only
secular regime Kabul ever had. One would think that when many warned that
helping anti-Assad rebels in Syria carried risks because included were
extremists who hated the West as much as they detested Assad.

The US was
either oblivious to such realities or it deliberately chose to strengthen the
jihadists in Syria so it could further destabilize the entire region, gambling
that this would work to its benefit to determine the balance of power. The
result was ISIS becoming a major force of instability and the US going begging
not only to the West and its conservative Arab allies, but reaching out to Iran.ISIS
did not have to exist, if it were not for the financial backing of Saudi Arabia
and the Gulf States, with Turkey providing the role of facilitator in order to
bring down Assad and secure a regional influential role comparable to that of
Iran.

Adding to
the absurdity of the ISIS problem, the oil under the group’s control probably
amounts to $2 million dollars per day. It would not be possible to sell it were
it not for well connected black market businesspeople in Turkey, a NATO ally playing
both sides but in essence leaning much more heavily toward ISIS than toward the
West that has opposed Turkey’s ambitions of having gas and oil reserves in Cypriot
waters shared with the Turkish-speaking Cypriots under Ankara’s tutelage. The Saudi
plan to bring down oil prices to punish Russia and Iran because they were
helping Syria’s Assad against rebels that include ISIS backfired not only for Saudi
and the Gulf states, but for the US and Western Europe whose energy companies
have suffered losses in the process. Because ISIS was selling oil at less than
half the price before prices dropped, the impact of the price decline has not
been as great to their operations.

It is now
official that the US has spent $1.6 trillion fighting terrorism from 9/11 until
the present.Puzzling to the expert
analyst as well as the casual observer is what exactly has the US gained by
spending in the last 13 years $1.6 trillion (10% of the annual GDP)? One thing
we do know is that the war in Iraq continues with more troops and independent contractors
to be sent in 2015. While the US has destabilization as a core strategy for the
Middle East, it is difficult to see any scenario how such a strategy would
yield any positive results either short-term or longer term. The only regional
beneficiary from all this is Iran and the only global power to benefit is
China. There is absolutely nothing in this for the US or EU that follows US
policy.

Ukraine and
Russia-Western relations

This is the
story that would not go away in 2014 and it will continue into 2015. This is
largely because Putin’s nationalism and determination to defend Russia’s right
to secure a sphere of influence by demanding that former Soviet republics such
as the Ukraine cannot be in the Western sphere of influence economically,
politically and militarily because this essentially entails using those
republics to contain Russia. From the US and EU perspective, the issue revolves
around securing as many military allies all around Russia and securing their
natural resources and markets by eliminating the dependence of these republics
on Russia. In other words, the Ukrainian crisis has been about Kiev choosing
what side it wishes to become a dependent satellite.

Clearly,
the West as well as Russia has launched a massive propaganda war against each
other to the degree that it is difficult for the disinterested observer to
decide what side is right or wrong. The Ukrainian crisis is not about right and
wrong, it is not about freedom and democracy, it is hardly about good vs. evil.
After all, Russia is not exactly a model democracy like Norway, Putin is hardly
a leader committed to human rights and social justice, and Moscow could care
less about the Russian minority in Ukraine, given that it has a horrible record
with minorities inside Russia. At the same time, the anti-Russian regime in
Kiev enjoys the backing of extreme right wing elements, including neo-Nazis.
Therefore, it is very difficult for the US and its Western allies to argue they
are interested in defending democracy when they are backing a regime that rich
Ukrainians control and neo-Nazis support.

There are
several reasons that the Ukraine crisis has a global impact. First, Western
sanctions and retaliatory Russian sanctions impact the economies of many
countries struggling to lift themselves out of the lingering recession. For
example, all of Eastern and southern Europe and the Balkans are impacted
because the Russian market absorbed some of the trade surplus from these
countries. At the same time, Russia has the energy leverage it used for
political maneuvering.

Just as
Putin has used gas as leverage in the Ukraine, he has used it and will use
toward all of Europe because he has no other comparable bargaining chip in the
economic field. When Putin announced that South Stream pipeline intended to
supply gas to Europe would discontinue it was obvious that he was sending a
message to the EU about its energy dependence, although the project had become
very expensive for GAZPROM. If it were not for the Ukraine crisis, Russian
economic relations with Europe would have proceeded on a much more harmonious
course, thus strengthening the economies of all parties concerned. US resolve
to isolate and encircle Russia, on the one hand,
and Russia’s determination to remain a great power with regional influence in
Eurasia, on the other hand, will probably continue for the balance of this
decade.

The
Ukrainian crisis has also been used by “crisis peddlers” in Russia and the West
interested in much heavier investment in defense, but also by nationalists on
all sides starving for a pretext to maintain the old Cold War status quo. It is
ironic that China actually benefits from the Ukraine crisis while Russia has
been suffering economically. Neither the US nor its EU partners have actually
gained anything from the crisis, unless we exclude the defense industry that is
salivating over new contracts because the US demands more spending from its
NATO partners. The impact of the Ukrainian crisis on the US debt and civilian
economy will not be nearly as bad owing to GDP growth in 2014, but it will be
substantial for the Europeans, especially the periphery nations struggling with
public finances and economies.

CIA Torture report

Those who
have studied US history and specially US counterinsurgency operations from the
Truman presidency to the present are hardly surprised with the CIA torture
report of Muslim prisoners. Nor would anyone who follows US conduct in foreign
operations has any doubt about human rights violations, considering that drone
warfare is only the latest of such violations that international organizations
and governments have condemned. Political assassinations and covert operations
resulting in the overthrow of elected regimes such as Iran in 1953 and
Guatemala in 1954 have been a part of what the CIA does. Therefore, torture is
hardly shocking, and indeed very hypocritical for anyone to argue that
disclosure is part of the “cleansing process” that both the agency and the US
government are undergoing.

Even more hypocritical was the media’s
presentation of the story, refusing in most cases to use the word torture and
to argue that “the end justifies the means” when it comes to US policy, but the
same does not apply to the “enemies” of the US.Long live American exceptionalism
is about all one can say in such cases. Given that the apologists of the
torture report as well as those who use it to claim that the “cleansing” has
begun are in fact acknowledging that imperial policies are alive and well.

Some of the
more disturbing aspects of the CIA torture report included the agency’s spying
on elected officials and dishing out enormous amounts of money to private
contractors hired as “consultants” to validate the means and goals of the
agency’s torture practices. Is it unique for the CIA to spy on US elected
officials and to spend taxpayers’ money as it wishes without any
accountability, simply to validate its practices? Of course it is not new and
of course the CIA has been in business since the 1940s to conduct intelligence
operations, even if that means spying on senators, although that is in essence
stepping over the FBI’s domain.

It has been
my longstanding position that the people who work at the CIA carry out work
comparable to that of soldiers in the battlefield. The policymakers – executive
and legislative branch - are responsible for the agency’s operations, even if
analysts and agents in the field often become overzealous about their work, and
even if their superiors consistently lie to elected officials who are there to
conduct oversight. In the absence of a political decision to have an
intelligence agency that does what its web site states, and not torture
prisoners, spy on senators, or squander millions of sweetheart contracts, the
agency will never change. This is especially true today as it has been in the
last two decades with the war on terror that only encourages abuses on the part
of the agency.

US obsession
with terrorism goes much deeper than spying on Senate committees and the EU
Parliament. This is how agencies justify their existence in the absence of a
Cold War. This is not to suggest that the US has no enemies, but it does go out
of its way with covert operations and military solutions to political crises to
create enemies, instead of solving problems through diplomatic channels
whenever possible. Let us consider the illegal CIA drone strikes that have
killing an undetermined number of civilians in Pakistan and Yemen. This illegal
type of warfare has been declared a war crime, but the US invokes the doctrine
of "Exceptionalism" because it has relegated to itself policeman of
the world.

The US terrorism
obsession serves a domestic political and economic agenda in keeping the status
quo despite the massive erosion of living standards on the part of the middle
class, as well as the US preeminent global military position. Next time that
CIA director Brennan goes on TV to insist that terrorism is behind everything
that goes wrong with the world, from airplanes with mechanical faults to the
Senate Intelligence Committee investigating torture methods by CIA operatives,
you must believe that he is only reflecting and serving the institutional
structure and nothing more.

I am
confident that the role of the CIA along with all agencies under the umbrella
of Homeland Security, and even the local police departments will become more
aggressive and more prone to violate human rights as well as the civil rights
and the Constitution in the foreseeable future.The result will be more social, racial, and ethnic polarization as
institutionalized racism in America continues, with apologists of law and order
on one side, and apologists of human rights and civil rights on the other
questioning whether law enforcement turning against its own citizens best
serves a society calling itself a “democracy”.

Persistence of
Institutionalized Racism in America.

Racial
tensions erupted this year in Ferguson, Mo., after Michael Brown, an unarmed
black teenager, was shot and killed by a white police officer, Darren
Wilson. Protesters clashed with police for weeks after the
shooting. The violence escalated again after a grand jury voted not to
indict Wilson. He has since resigned from the Ferguson Police Department,
citing safety concerns for his family and fellow officers.

The incidents of police officers killing black youth in Ferguson MO and New
York are not isolated but part of militarized police force that emulates the
behavior of the armed forces and treats citizens as potential enemies. More
alarming, the police are above accountability even in cases of shooting at
unarmed citizens, an issue that ought to concern all interested in defending
democracy. When the police act like a military force and treat minorities like
terrorist suspects there is the larger question of the nature of the political
system.

The mass demonstrations in 2014 against the persistence of racism did not
take place because they were symptomatic of isolated incidents involving a
single police officer and a single minority youth. People of all backgrounds
recognize the absence of social justice rooted in a political economy
benefiting the wealthy to the detriment of the lower classes, especially
minorities. American institutions and values are frozen in time and the
militarized police state exists to make sure that change toward greater social
justice does not take place because it would cut into the profits of the top 10
percent of the wealthiest Americans. The law and order mentality is an
extension of the militarist ideology intended to continue with imperial
policies abroad and police state methods at home. Americans see the link
between the US war on terror and the police methods toward minorities. When
Middle East countries insist that the US has no moral authority to preach human
rights or civil rights to any country in the world is it because the people of
the Middle East see hypocrisy in US policy, just as the American demonstrators
do?

The Papacy and Social
Justice

The papacy
has always been a very conservative institution that has helped to preserve the
status quo not only within the church but in society as well. Rarely would a
pope come out against the secular elites, often siding even with the most
notorious heads of government, as was the case in the 1920s when the Vatican
struck a deal with Mussolini and later expressed its preference to Hitler
because he was anti-Communist.In 2014, Pope
Francis grabbed headlines because he reiterated his commitment to social
justice against what he deems a culture of capitalism that has created multiple
social problems.

Conservatives
of all sorts, from economic and political to cultural and religious, fear that
this Pope may be a hopeless leftist considering that he continues to reach out
to political leftist leaders expressing concern about the institutional
shortcomings of capitalism. By raising the questions about the root of ills in
society and by answering that inequality is at the root, Pope Francis terrifies
the wealthy and governments promoting policies that maintain inequality. If the
Pope limited his message to "spiritual" equality as a right for all
people, then the wealthy, the media, mainstream politicians and pundits acting
as apologists for the wealthy and the state protecting the privileged elites
would not have a problem. Crossing over from spiritual equality into material
one poses a major threat to the status quo. Now that Communism is no more, here
comes a Pope who dares to interpret the word of Christ literally and dares to
apply it to the realities of peoples' lives.

Pope Francis is actually taking the Vatican and by extension the Catholic
Church to its popular base that has been diminishing partly because of
scandals, but also because of the increasing secularization of society that
deems religion anachronistic in the age of space travel when there are
scientific explanations for everything. Pope Francis has deliberately decided
to sideline the conservative leaders of the Catholic Church, including US
bishops historically reactionary and opposed to social justice, largely because
the decadence and corruption of the institutions rests with the conservative
elements of the Church hiding behind the veil of respectability.

That Pope
Francis recognizes the decadence of society rests in the hierarchy of the
institution, in the hierarchy of the political and financial world and media is
a testament to his pragmatism, not Socialism as critics have insisted. Although
he insists that he has no political ideology, he is clearly against the
concentration of wealth and rise in poverty, for he too knows that a tiny
percentage of the world's population owns the lion's share of wealth, while
one-third of the planet's people linger in abject poverty.

It is unrealistic to assume that the Catholic Church has the power to transform
the politics of any nation, though it is equally absurd for politicians to go
against a strong religious institution. With 1.2 billion faithful behind it, of
which 78 million are Americans, the Papacy is a powerful institution but under
the leadership of Pope Francis it is only expressing the concerns about the
decadence and injustices of capitalism that people already know. Catholics live
in the real world and see what is happening around their neighborhood as well
as around the planet, where human life has no value but money is the new God to
worship.

American talk-radio show hosts known for their extreme right-wing propaganda
have devoted a great deal of their work to defame Pope Francis as a Marxist,
merely because he speaks of human-centered values, instead of capital-centered
ones; because the Pope warns against the hypocrisy of clergy in a manner not
that different from Martin Luther 500 years ago; because he argues that the
Church is not the walls of the cathedral or its clergy, but the people and
their daily needs. Is there any doubt that the critics of Pope Francis would
crucify Jesus Christ because he too would dare question the unjust institutions
of our time?

Besides attacking the injustices of the political economy and social structure,
Pope Francis has also tackled the controversial issues of women's rights and
sexual orientation. Conservatives, preferring to live secret lives of hypocrisy
while openly advocating rigid restrictions on woman's right to choose and
sexual orientation, are upset that Pope Francis has addressed abortion and gays
by deviating from the traditional condemnatory position of the church.
Preferring to have scandals involving clergy swept under the rug and to turn a
blind eye to the reality of abortion, conservatives question where the
"populist Pope" is headed when he goes out of his way to reexamine
the church's position on such issues while embracing the prostitutes,
prisoners, the poor and even non-Catholics as though they were human! In short,
conservatives are confused why Pope Francis is acting in the manner
Christianity calls him to act. Why deviate from a centuries-long tradition of
popes aligned with dictators, the very wealthy, the corrupt elites for
interested in having the masses remain docile under the cross.

Pope Francis is sending the message that religion is not a tool for keeping the
masses docile and accepting of the existing social structure and political
economy, instead of questioning it. This in itself terrifies the political and
financial elites because the message is transmitted to other faiths around the
world at a tie that social justice has been sidelined in favor of capital
accumulation. If Pope Francis continues along the lines of social justice and
does not cave to internal and external pressures to eulogize the status quo,
then the Catholic Church could potentially play a role in parallel secular
struggles for social justice.

The Ebola epidemic.

The Ebola
outbreak of 2014 demonstrated that an epidemic outbreak in one part of the
world can threaten the rest of the world unless the World Health Organization,
UN and governments take preventative measures to contain the disease.While thousands died in West Africa after a
few cases in Guinea, the virus spread throughout the region in August and
September 2014. It is hardly a secret that every few years, sub-Sahara African
countries are confronted with famine and disease. It is widely known that sub-Sahara
Africa has the world’s lowest living standards and the continent is the most
exploited on the planet by Western countries, China, India, and Japan that take
out the rich natural resources but give very little back to the people. In
addition to the immense problem of political corruption that as an obstacle to
progress, there is the reality of Africa’s trade and investment, dependence on the
world’s richest nations that invest very little on the non-commercial infrastructure
- health and education – and even less
on sustainable agriculture that conflicts with commercial operations.

When the
first cases appeared in the US, the media, crisis peddlers that include
everyone from media talking heads to insurance and pharmaceutical companies
insisted that Ebola had the potential to become the worst epidemic in human
history. The sense of fear and panic that the government and media created was
comparable to that of the “war on terror”. Meanwhile, the CDC finally came out
and admitted that the best manner to deal with such outbreaks is to address
them at the source early. In other words, it would have cost a great deal less and the public would have been spared the panic and fear if the richest
countries had provided the needed medical aid to West Africa to address the
problem.

The crisis rhetoric about Ebola constituting
another global war was often heard in the West by media and politicians, but
not one word about providing both government and corporate assistance from
businesses, especially oil and minerals, to alleviate the conditions that
account for virus outbreaks in sub-Sahara Africa. In October 2014, the magazine
Scientific American ran an article entitled: “Ebola Exacerbates West Africa’s
Poverty Crisis.” Those familiar with conditions in the continent and who follow
news from the area know that governments simply do not have the resources to
confront the combination of food and medical problems of West Africa.

The UN as well as EU along with
Japan and China knows that this is the case in Africa. It is ironic that the Republican
Party’s budgetary cuts resulting in cuts to the National Institutes of Health prevented
the development of a vaccine. It is also ironic that the Republicans and other
neo-liberals who look to the private sector for solutions found themselves blaming
government and international agencies for not doing enough about Ebola. The
larger issue with regard to the Ebola outbreak relates to government funds
invested in prevention and containment of such outbreaks vs. funds expended for
military adventures and defense that only destabilize at best and destroy at
worst. In my view, the US will continue to invest in the defense machine and in
destabilization and destruction, to the neglect of health crises such as Ebola
that it used as yet another case to foment a sense of panic among the general
population. Neoliberal ideologues convinced that government is evil and private
sector is godly had no answer for society when the Ebola outbreak took place.
Yet, the neo-liberal mindset of cutting funding for public programs will prevail in the
future and this means even more outbreaks comparable or much worse than Ebola.

"A
gripping, passion-filled, and suspenseful tale of love, betrayal,
political and religious intrigue, this novel entices the reader’s
senses and intellect beyond conventions. Slaves to Gods and Demons
takes the reader through a roller coaster enthralling journey of
personal trials and triumphs of a family emerging vanquished and
destitute after World War II.

Narrated by a young boy, Morfeos, modeled after the Greco-Roman pagan
deity of sleep and dreams, the book reveals the soul of a people trying
to ascertain and assert their identity while rebuilding their lives and
recapturing the glory of a lost civilization.

Seeking liberation from restraints of time, social conventions, and
binding traditions, the deity of dreams provides the conformist and the
free-spirited characters in the novel with venues for redemption that
are mere paths toward illusions. Exploring the complexities of human
relationships shaped by priest and politician alike, the novel rests on
the central theme that life is invariably a series of illusions, some
of which are euphoric, most horrifying, all an integral part of daily
existence.

Striving for purpose amid life’s absurdities after the destruction of
western civilization in two global wars, the characters in Slaves to
Gods and Demons struggle between holding on to the glory and grandeur of
a pagan legacy and the Christian present shaped by contemporary
secular events in Western Civilization."